The Person of Advent • Central Campus

Getting Started

After watching the Sermon recap video, discuss what we can learn about the character of God by the way He entered the world (namely, through normal people)?

Community Discussion

Pastor Kurt made the point that many of us have given up on the expectation that God would intervene in our lives or that He would be required to do so if we followed certain patterns of behavior, principles, etc. Which of these better describes your current relationship with God?

Believing that God is personally relatable and that Jesus entered our world to proclaim and demonstrate another world frees us to relate to Him, to others, and to share His personal relatability. In order to do that we challenged to move from pity, through sympathy, and into empathy. Empathy was defined as "emotionally embracing the suffering of another with a desire to share the burden of the suffering." Pastor Kurt gave five keys to helping with this:

Focus on the needs and interests of others.

Suspend your critiques.

Reflect on the meaning behind a person's feelings.

Clearly distinguish yourself from the person with whom you are empathizing.

Point to the victory we have in Christ.

In what ways has your community been able to empathize with you?

In what ways have you been able to empathize with those in your community/others?